


Mercy (and Other Useless Things)

by Verin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:46:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verin/pseuds/Verin
Summary: "Be quiet, Bella, I shall deal with you in a moment.."Only one of the Dark Lord's servants returned from the Ministry that night. Only one would suffer the full weight of his wrath.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I'll be honest, there is nothing exciting about this prologue chapter. We all know the story, I'm just reminding you of it to set the scene.
> 
> Dialogue is taken directly from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The rest of the content is original work.
> 
> (Note: part of this work has been previously posted on ff.net, under the handle Viridescent.)

"Come out, come out, little Harry!" The boy had the audacity to chase her, and Bellatrix, rather than feeling any sensation of fear in the matter, experience nothing short of pure thrill. She had finally put down her disgraceful mutt of a relation. Another soul struck from the earth, just as her aunt had struck them from the family tree. "What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge my dear cousin!" Here was the chance to destroy the Boy Who Lived for her master. He was without protection: a teenage, weak little waif who thought he could beat a master of the dark arts, second only to the Dark Lord.

"I am!" came the returned shout from the schoolboy, which echoed around the large Atrium, and she could hear the emotion tightening his throat. It was pathetic. A maniacal laugh escaped the murderess' lips. "Aaaaaah… did you love him, little baby Potter?"

"Crucio!" The schoolboy clumsily fired the curse at her and Bellatrix screamed, though it was a more out of shock than actual pain. The force of the spell caused her to lose her footing, forcing he backwards to the ground. But she was not down for long, forcing herself back up to face the Boy Who Lived. She was no longer laughing.

"Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" she yelled as Harry ducked behind a statue of a wizard, which took her counter-curse for him. She had abandoned the mocking tone. "You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain - to enjoy it - righteous anger won't hurt me for long - I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson-"

Heavy-lidded eyes spied the movement of the boy from behind the statue, and she stole the chance, "Crucio!" The curse missed, and frustration welled up inside her as she watched only the inanimate statue suffer from her efforts.

"Potter, you cannot win against me!" she cried, desperate to leave her mark upon the boy. He was moving as she did, each orbiting the statue, one prey, the other… predator. "I was and am the Dark Lord's most loyal servant. I learned the Dark Arts from him, and I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, can never hope to compete-“

"Stupefy!" The boy really was delusional if he thought such a spell would stop, or even slow, her. Fury mounted as she was interrupted, and her own counter was lightning fast against him. "Protego!" Save for the lazy flick of her wrist, the witch did not otherwise move against the spell flung at her. The boy barely had any time to duck, and the jet of red light (his own stunning spell) bounced straight back at him. It was the smallest satisfaction that Bellatrix took as she watched the little boy scurry back behind his hiding place, weakling that he was. But she was growing bored now. "Potter, I'm going to give you one chance! Give me the prophecy - roll it out towards me now - and I may spare your life!”

"Well, you're going to have to kill me, because it's gone!" Bella was horrified to hear the reply as the boy's laugh mirrored an insanity close to those she had often heard in the wizarding prison.. "And he knows! Your dear old mate Voldemort knows it's gone! He's not going to be happy with you, is he?”

"What? What do you mean?" Bellatrix cried, unable to stop the fear and uncertainty that crept into her voice. For the briefest of moments, she cursed herself for allowing her brother-in-law the control, for not dealing with the situation and taking the prophecy from the off. But… no. The boy had to be lying.

Yet he continued with his bold claims, further inciting her to rage, alloyed with barely controlled terror. "The prophecy smashed when I was trying to get Neville up the steps! What do you think Voldemort'll say about that, then?”

"Liar! You’ve got it, Potter, and you will give it to me! Accio Prophecy! _**Accio Prophecy!**_ " But the boy only laughed, that same, manic laugh, and she was incensed further. The seed that had been planted had grown, and taken hold in her mind. He was telling the truth. The bright green light that flew at the statue he was hiding behind from her wand was in stark contrast to the red that darkened her vision.

"Nothing there!" Harry shouted as he shied away, once again, from her violent attempts at ending the boy. His voice echoed terribly around the room, sounds that Bella did not want to hear once, let alone repeatedly. "Nothing to summon! It smashed and nobody heard what it said, tell your boss that!"

"No!' she screamed, and she felt in her bones that what he said was the truth. She stepped forward, unconsciously intent on making the boy suffer, even as she continued to shout, "It isn't true, you're lying! Master, I tried, I tried - do not punish me-“

"Don't waste your breath!" yelled the boy, and he must have seen her movements, for he edged further, forever keeping a protective barrier of gold-coated metal between them. "He can't hear you from here!"

"Can't I, Potter?" Bellatrix's blood ran cold as she heard her Lord's dangerously calm voice echo through the hall.

Tall, thin and black-hooded, his terrible snakelike face white and gaunt, his scarlet, slit-pupilled eyes staring… Lord Voldemort had appeared in the middle of the hall, his wand pointing at the teenage nemesis. For the moment, his servant was ignored.

"So, you smashed my prophecy?" The Dark Lord spoke softly, gaze utterly terrifying in their expression, staring at Harry. It was the type of elongated eye contact that demanded a greater degree of physical separation. It wasn’t intentionally cold, but his face somehow lacked the mobility others had, which made him all. There was no life behind those eyes. Every move he made betrayed his intentions and none of them were noble.

The breath that the female had been holding was finally released as her master spoke to him. "No, Bella, he is not lying… I see the truth looking at me from within his worthless mind… months of preparation, months of effort… and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again…”

"Master, I am sorry, I knew not, I was fighting the Animagus Black!" There was no shame that Bella could bring herself to acknowledge, much less care about, as she flung herself down at The Dark Lord's feet. Then, amidst the panic that was threatening to tear her apart, she remembered. Dumbledore. She had to warn him. "Master, you should know-“

" _Be quiet_ , Bella," interrupted Voldemort softly, commanding her instant obedience with the more threat of his presence. "I shall deal with you in a moment. Do you think I have entered the Ministry of Magic to hear your snivelling apologies?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to those of you who showed interest in this story. I kind of... forgot about it between getting married and other real life things getting in the way! I came back to read it again this past week and I can't make myself happy with this, but no amount of editing seems to fix it. So here yah go.

The worst flaw a person could have was that of self-deception. Bellatrix Black Lestrange was just so. She acted on impulse and then created the reason for her actions after the fact. She could always justify anything she did, if questioned on it: always part of a grander plan, and everything worked out in the end. In truth she never thought before she acted or spoke. She never stopped to ask herself if her response was the right one, or merely the first knee-jerk reaction that sprung to mind. Whatever she said was almost never true, or at least it was only ‘true’ for her.

The Azkaban escapee paced the room. With each step back and forth, her feet became heavier. It was why she kept moving: if she stopped, that might be it. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked like the timer on a bomb, inevitable. Inescapable. She could no more avoid the dread that tricked down her spine than she could the thudding of her own heart, threatening to crack her ribs as it pounded with futility against the bone that encased it. 

She lifted a hand to tug through her ebony brindled locks as a continuous growl stayed upon her lips. Her ribs ached every time that she turned, a result of the crushing pressure of the golden-coated statue that had held her at away from the battling foes in the Ministry. But she didn't let that stop her pacing, for it was her pacing that kept the urges to rip into anything available and breakable at bay.

The Slytherin stopped by the door only once, hand hovering over the door knob. She wanted to twist it, to see if it would open. She didn’t need to - the Dark Lord has no need for servants who required physical restraint, and it had been decades since he had reason to doubt Bellatrix’s faith and submission.

It was a point of immense pride for the Black heiress that she had been singled out by her master for refinement of her substantial skill and power. She knew that her loyalty was unrivalled. And he knew it too. This evening, however, none of that seemed to matter. The team had failed, she had failed. No one else had returned with them. Bellatrix could only assume the rest were either dead or captured by the Ministry… she hadn’t dared ask, and the Dark Lord hadn’t deigned to share.

Her master had side-long apparated with her into the room and promptly vanished. All that had been uttered aloud had been from her lips, where her master had remained silent. That, if anything, had frightened her more. She was used to feeling the waves of fury radiating from his form. But... where she would normally associate such sensations with blistering heat, it was no so with her master this evening.

No. It had been cold. She shivered at the memory, at the unnaturalness and uncertainty when the Dark Lord locked his crimson gaze on her. In the gap between her eyes and his, a battle was fought and he trounced her without a flinch. She had once been told that Voldemort had no use for incompetence. It was her poor judgement which caused the Dark Lord's ire. That fucking Potter boy and his bumbling band of misfits hadn’t even deliberately intended to destroy the prophecy. They had fumbled and dropped it. That, more than anything else, was cutting away at her.

Even the satisfaction of having culled and removed another unworthy member from her family line was not enough to keep her own overwhelming fury at bay. 

Slowly she turned to peer out of the window, her hands lifting to rest her weight upon the windowsill. When she had met the Dark Lord, Bellatrix had been but a schoolgirl, yet she had been confident of her place in the world. He had encouraged her ideals, he channelled her skill and power to his cause.

The water sat on the glass before her, condensation beading the inside of the panes. Bella ran her finger across it and watched the transparent liquid drip and trickle, pooling along the wooden frame.The words echoed inside of her head as she lifted her hands so then to push on the window pane, pushing the window open so then she could at least let the air drift into the room. She lifted her chin as the wind caressed her pale skin. Outside there was no bird song, by now it must be midnight - the time in which today becomes tomorrow.

The air is so brittle it could snap and, if it doesn’t, Bellatrix might. Her mind raced with things she could never say. Platitudes would not cut it right now. A few hours ago they were all she was desperate to utter, anything to ease the terrible burden of worry. In this suspended horror that she willed to end and to last an eternity at the same time, her ears were strained, constantly waiting… waiting for her salvation and her destruction.

The glass of the window panes rattled, a warning that her frustration was dangerously close to surpassing her limits of magical control. Years in Azkaban had caused more deterioration than she cared to admit. But how much, she wondered. Was she damaged? Had her wardens' own despicable magic rendered her incapable of fulfilling her potential within the inner circle? A crack appeared. A sliver of glass narrowly missed her eye. The witch, who had barely flinched, inhaled, drawing in the the oxygen of the crisp night wind.

Her father had, since childhood, instilled a strong sense of pride in her supremacy over all, be they muggles, half-breeds, mudbloods, or half-bloods. Even most pureblood families were beneath her. With her failure, however, she was troubled by the knowledge that her position as one of the Dark Lord's favourites was in jeopardy, if not already lost. She had a limited window of opportunity to reassert herself. She could not remain trapped in this room.

A frown creased her forehead at this thought and she turned away from the window to view the door, she felt tinges of despair colour her fury. The Dark Lord had risked exposure to break her out of the wizarding prison. He had risked his cause to see her free.

Yet her gratefulness for his mercy had been shown only in failure.

Like Icarus, she had flown too close to the sun. She had thought she was invincible until the wax melted from her wings. At first, it was drip by drip. Bellatrix was too busy enjoying her flight to even notice. Pride did that to people, it blinded them to their own demise. Before she knew it, she was crashing down, fated to drown, towards the angry sea.


End file.
